The following is my system; emachines T3256 3200+ Amd Athlon XP 160 gb WD hard drive(65% Open) 1 GB Ram EVGA FX5500 GPU(No Over Clocking) Benq 1625 DVD Writer w/Lightscribe Lite On 16P95 DVD Rom Windows XP w/SP2 I'm looking for some opinions as to if this setup can be made to run faster, play games better.My computer runs fine and I do some gaming (grandkids do mainly). With the newer games gameplay is okay at lower settings. Is it time for a newer system or can things be done to this? Thanks in advance for replys or suggestions! Carp
I didn't do an overly elaborate search for your comp. But I couldn't find any motherboard specs. To speed up a computer, 1. max memory. 2. max processor the motherboard can support. 3. 7200 rpm or faster harddrive. EDIT>4. forgot the video card. A lot of gamers here, they'll have good suggestions. Rephrase your question, to specifics, and the guys will jump on it. If you want to overclock, query if your bios-motherboard will support it. EDIT AGAIN> CPU: AMD Athlon™ XP 3200+ Processor QuantiSpeed™ Architecture operates at 2.200GHz 512KB L2 cache & 400MHz FSB Operating System: Genuine Microsoft® Windows® XP Home2 Chipset: NVIDIA® nForce™2 Memory: 512MB DDR (PC 2700) Hard Drive: 160GB HDD (7200rpm) Optical Drive: DVD +/- RW Drive (Write Max: 8x DVD+/-R, 4x DVD+/-RW, 32x CD-R, 16x CD-RW; Reads 40x CD, 12x DVD); 48x Max. CD-ROM Drive Media Reader: 8-in-1 digital media manager (USB 2.0, Secure Digital (SD), Smart Media, Compact Flash, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, Micro Drive, Multimedia Card) Video: NVIDIA® GeForce4™ MX graphics (1 AGP 8x slot available) Sound: nForce™ 6-channel Audio Network: 10/100Mbps built-in Ethernet Modem: 56K ITU v.92-ready Fax/Modem Peripherals: Premium Plus Multimedia Keyboard, 2-Button Wheel Mouse, Amplified Stereo Speakers Ports/Other: 5 USB 2.0 ports (4 in back; 1 in Media Reader), 1 Serial, 1 Parallel, 2 PS/2, Audio-In & Out Dimensions: 7.25" W x 14.125" H x 16" D Here's a link to the upgrades the manu offers. http://parts.emachines.com/emachines/sys_lookup.asp
The mobo is a FIC and has a 462 processor in it .Make sure you've got the fsb set to 400 after you put in the vid card. Chris I have the specs on this and replaced the mobo with a ECS Elite and Sempron 3400 and 2 gigs of Patriot memory.
your being let down by your graphics card try something faster a 6800 or x800 should do it what game is giving the most trouble?
copydog, thanks for the suggestions. ChrisC586, How do you set the FSB to 400? I'm not real savvy. Also are you saying you have my machine and you replaced the mobo and memory yourself? Expensive? Where would you buy the parts? pcrepair, Would my machine support a better card or would I also have to upgrade the PS to more than 300 which it came with? The game that I notice poor preformance is Tomb Raider Legend. Cannot get any next gen content at all. King Kong has some lagging at times. Thanks to all of your for help and any continuing suggestions. Carp
carp11 Yes I have the same Machine, The only way to get that I found the 400 fsb is with a better Video card. Do a Google search on the T3256 and theres a lot of feedback on getting the 400 fsb. I also put in 2 gigs of ram which it does need. After which it will set in the bios. One of the bad things Is I couldn't get a update for the Phoenix with out paying so I left that alone.I had to replace the Mobo because of a massive power surge.I bought all the components at Newegg.Mobo memory and processor was about $300.00.Up untill that time I ran the 300 Psu and then put in the Ultra 500. A replacement Mobo from FIC was about $175.00 with the same bare necessitys, way out of line. Up until the surge I had just replaced the Video card which played 99% ofthe games. I have always liked this computer for a store bought and still use it. Chris
you have onboard mx graphics if you buy an agp 6800 it will work much better possibly an x1600 would work well depending on your preference for who makes the chipset
Thanks to pcrepair I left out that till the Power surge I had the ATI 9250 and replaced as he suggested with the 6800. Chris
pcrepair, ChrisC586, Thanks again for your input. I'll start doing searches for the 6800 and probably a higher PSC, just to be sure I have no problems.I'll also check into more memory. I have two memory slots which are filled with 2 500 sticks giving me a gig. I guess I just have to eliminate them and use two 1 GIGs ? Wish I had more than 1 computer so I could use the 500's. Oh well, as long as the wife doesn't know it will be allright. Thanks very much!!! Carp
first thing i would do if you want to get more juice out of that computer is this. Make sure your computer is running as cold as you can get it. i keep the case off of my pc and have a high powered small fan (not a pc fan) looks like this that blows into my computer 24hrs a day.. much more effective then those stupid case fans that cost the same amount. also might want to take your Hard drive out of its slot and place it where a fan can blow on it.. hard drives get extreemly hot and that means less performance. Install Tweaknow Powerpack 2006 ( search Fosi in google and you can find it free ) do the quick optimize, for internet put you have a t1 line no matter what you have. then reboot. (note never use ram flushing software.. they usualy make the computer run a lot slower) now for another big improvment- right click my computer > properties > advanced tab > click button for settings on the performance section > uncheck everything excluding these items (keep only these.. but they can also be unchecked for a little more performance increase) show windows contents while gragging smooth-scroll list boxes use a background image for each folder type use common tasks in folders use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop ----------------------------------------------------------------- here are some other tweaks you can do at your own risk.. but this is my tweaks to make my OS run faster ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Cleaning the Prefetch Directory WindowsXP has a new feature called Prefetch. This keeps a shortcut to recently used programs. However it can fill up with old and obsolete programs. To clean this periodically go to: Star / Run / Prefetch Press Ctrl-A to highlight all the shorcuts Delete them ------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Open notepad.exe, type "del c:\windows\prefetch\ntosboot-*.* /q" (without the quotes) & save as "ntosboot.bat" in c:\ 2. From the Start menu, select "Run..." & type "gpedit.msc". 3. Double click "Windows Settings" under "Computer Configuration" and double click again on "Shutdown" in the right window. 4. In the new window, click "add", "Browse", locate your "ntosboot.bat" file & click "Open". 5. Click "OK", "Apply" & "OK" once again to exit. 6. From the Start menu, select "Run..." & type "devmgmt.msc". 7. Double click on "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" 8. Right click on "Primary IDE Channel" and select "Properties". 9. Select the "Advanced Settings" tab then on the device 0 or 1 that doesn't have 'device type' greyed out select 'none' instead of 'autodetect' & click "OK". 10. Right click on "Secondary IDE channel", select "Properties" and repeat step 9. 11. Reboot your computer. ------------------------------------------------------------- 1: right click on my computer and click on poperties 2: then click on advancted tab 3: look for start up and recovery from the bottom then click on setting 4: uncheck all 3 part from system failure.. click ok and you're done. to disable the error report: just follow step 1 - 2 from above then look for the error reporting click on it andd check the disable error reporting.. click ok.. thats all.. ------------------------------------------------------------- To increase system performance Right click my computer. Click properties. Click advanced. Click settings (under performance). Click Adjust for best performance. Scroll to the bottom and check the last one “use visual styles on windows and buttons”. Tweak The Swap File For Users with 256 MB RAM or more this tweak will boost their Windows- and Game-Performance. What it does: It tells Windows not to use any Swap File until there is really no more free RAM left. Open the System Configuration Utility by typing msconfig.exe in the RUN command. There in your System.ini you have to add "ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1" under the 386enh section. Restart your Windows and enjoy better Game performance Disable Services XP Pro runs a lot of services by default that are pointless if your not on a corporate network, the following services are ones that I safely disable thereby freeing up memory but check what each one does first to make sure your not using it for something: Go to Run and type services.msc, right click on each service, properties and choose disable.[bold] (Fuggedup did not do all these but most of them as i needed a few of these for some server junk i run) [/bold] Alerter Application Management Automatic Updates Background Intelligent Transfer Clipbook Distributed Link Tracking Client Distributed Transaction Coordinater Error Reporting Service Fast User Switching Compatibility IMAPI CD-Burning Indexing Service IPSEC Services Messenger Net Logon Net Meeting Remote Desktop Sharing Network DDE Network DDE DSDM Portable Media Serial Number Remote Desktop Help Session Manager Remote Registry Secondary Logon Smartcard SSDP Discovery Service Telnet Themes Uninterruptible Power Supply Universal Plug and Play Device Host Upload Manager Webclient Wireless Zero Configuration WMI Performance Adaptor ----------------------------------------------- Speed Up The File System NTFS is a great file system, but its feature-set comes at a slight cost in performance. You can negate this a little with the following tips: * By default NTFS will automatically update timestamps whenever a directory is traversed. This isn't a necessary feature, and it slows down large volumes. Disable it by going to Run and type regedit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\FileSystem and set 'DisableNTFSLastAccessUpdate' to 1. * NTFS uses disparate master file control tables to store filesystem information about your drives. Over time these core MFT files grow and become fragmented, slowing down all accesses to the drive. By setting aside a little space, MFT's can grow without becoming fragmented. In the same key where you disabled the last access feature creat a new DWORD value called 'NtfsMftZoneReservation' and set it to 2. ---------------------------------------------------- Disable DLL Caching Windows Explorer caches DLLs (Dynamic-Link Libraries) in memory for a period of time after the application using them has been closed. This can be an inefficient use of memory. 1. Find the key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Explorer]. 2. Create a new DWORD sub-key named 'AlwaysUnloadDLL' and set the default value to equal '1' to disable Windows caching the DLL in memory. 3. Restart Windows for the change to take effect. -------------------------------------------- Tweak The Prefetch 1. Run "Regedit" 2. Goto [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters\EnablePrefetcher] 3. Set the value to either 0-Disable, 1-App launch prefetch, 2-Boot Prefetch, 3-Both ("3" is recommended). 4. Reboot. It will decrease the boot time but double and increase the performance of your XP. -------------------------------------------- SpeedUp Your Connection By 20% (Cable/DSL Users Only) 1.Log on as "Administrator". 2. Run - gpedit.msc 3. Expand the "Local Computer Policy" branch. 4. Then expand the "Administrative Templates" branch. 5. Expand the "Network" branch. 6. Highlight the "QoS Packet Scheduler" in left pane. 7. In the right window pane double-click the "Limit Reservable Bandwidth" setting. 8. On the settings tab check the "Enabled" item. 9. Change "Bandwidth limit %" to read 0. 10. Then go to your Network connections Start=>Control Panel>Network & Internet connections>Network Connections and right-click on your connection. Then under the General or the Networking tab, (where it lists your protocols) make sure QoS packet scheduler is enabled. It may take effect immediately on some systems. To be sure, just re-boot. ------------------------------------------------------------------- How to get rid of Restart Now/Restart Later. found this after a lot of Googling, so I'd like to share the solution. This may not be new or even advanced but it surely helped me... Anyone who is running Windows XP SP2 knows about this. The most annoying, ill-designed dialog box ever invented in the history of the computers that asks "Updating your computer is almost complete. You must restart your computer for the updates to take effect. Do you want to restart your computer now?" IPB Image And there are only two options: Restart Now/Restart Later. "Restart Later" means that this thing will ask you again in 10 minutes. If you're willing to work for the next 4 hours until lunch before rebooting, this means you'll need to answer this question 24 times. It also steals the focus. to get rid of it: Start / Run / gpedit.msc / Local Computer Policy / Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Update / Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations You can configure how often it will nag you (I re-configured it for 720 minutes, which means I'll be asked twice on a work day), or completely disable it. a reboot is needed -----------------------------------------------------------------
fuggedup, thanks for the info, I'll try some of it and see what happens. ddp, I'll tell her, 38 years of experience !!! Thanks again for all the input from everyone, it will help!!! Carp
